A set of instructions including a formula.
When the word recipe appeared in English in the fifteenth century, it referred only to directions for making medicines; not for another three hundred years, in the early eighteenth century, did recipe also come to denote directions for preparing a dish of food. Before this modern sense of recipe developed, instructions for making food were called receipts, a usage dating all the way back to the fourteenth century. The difference between calling such culinary instructions receipts or recipes is slight, at least in so far as both words derive from the same source, the Latin recipere, meaning to receive (the words are spelt differently because recipe developed from the present tense of recipere while receipt developed from a past tense); these two words became associated with cooking because when you make a dish you “receive” into your hand the various ingredients required by the dish. Going even further back in history, the Latin recipere was formed from the prefix re, meaning again, and the verb capere, meaning to take. The ancient Romans also combined capere, or forms deriving from it, with other words to create numerous compounds, many of which were later adopted by English. These include participate (from the Latin participare, meaning to take part), prince (from the Latin princeps, literally meaning first taker), and even forceps (a direct adoption of the Latin forceps, meaning hot-taker, forceps having originated as a blacksmith’s tool). Incidentally, the pharmaceutical symbol <CATCH> (sometimes represented as Rx) stands for recipe; the crossbar represents the staff of Jove, the patron of doctors, under whose auspices the medical recipe was to be prepared.
A culinary treasure trove, a recipe consists of a detailed list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions to create a specific dish. The beauty of recipes lies in their adaptability, allowing for variations in ingredient types and quantities, as well as methods of mixing and cooking. This versatility often results in numerous distinct recipes for a single dish, each offering its own unique charm. However, certain iconic or specialized recipes, especially those crafted by renowned chefs over the past century, possess a singular “correct” or authentic version that is hailed as the epitome of culinary excellence.